Indirect Effects of the Sun on Earth’s Climate
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Mike Jonas writing as Guest Blogger at Watt Up With That has written an very interesting essay on the potential impact of the sun on our climate and climate history. Recommend reading for Next Grand Minimum readers, as there is … Continue reading →
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June 11, 2017 at 01:57AM
How Much Is The CET Affected By UHI?
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By Paul Homewood
Reposted from WUWT, originally published in January.
It’s old, but still relevant:
The answer is blindingly obvious, from above: they are all subject to considerable modern local urbanisation immediately to the North, including heated greenhouses designed to replicate a Mediterranean climate.
The Met Office relies upon just three weather stations to record the Central England Temperature: Stonyhurst (Lancashire), Pershore (Worcestershire) and Rothamsted (Hertfordshire). http://ift.tt/1o6Q9bs
The Met Office averages these three temperatures and makes a 0.2 degrees C negative adjustment to compensate for the UHI effect. http://ift.tt/2reFkuJ
The Met Office has made this adjustment since 1974. Bizarrely, they don’t seem to know exactly why 1974 was chosen other than being able to speculate that “It was probably around then that the effects of urbanisation began to be noticed, although this date as chosen may be slightly arbitrary”[1].
But is this 0.2 degrees negative adjustment adequate for the three CET weather stations? I suggest it may not be:
All three weather stations have material modern urbanisation starting within 100 to 200 metres in their Northern quadrant, this development being associated with the rapidly expanding research and educational institutions which control the land on which they are sited. These institutions are often built around old country houses with formal gardens sited to their South in the UK, so their commonality of orientation is unsurprising.
Rothamsted Research (f/k/a Rothamsted Experimental Station) now shelters its weather station from the North winds and warms it up by modern buildings rapidly thrown up to the NNE:
Stoneyhurst College has expanded in the NNW, and now hugely shelters its weather station from the North winds and warms it up with new building and nearby tarmacadam ball sport courts:
Pershore College has gone a step further and covered the land immediately to the NNW with heated greenhouses http://ift.tt/2rZFEKQ , car parks and new building, having a similar effect on the Pershore weather station as its two sister sites. Surely a greenhouse designed to enable “plants to flourish in a semi-Mediterranean climate” sited up wind of a weather station may have some effect?
It is not beyond the wit of man to postulate that these localised, specific effects might artificially inflate the recorded temperature. Increasing the data to a temperature not properly compensated for by the small 0.2 degrees C adjustment applied by the Met Office, thereby inflating the CET to a number more amenable to the Met Office and the IPCC.
This would particularly warm data recorded in colder temperatures, where winds are more likely to be from the North.
The Met Office plans to
“overhaul” its CET datasets during mid-2017. Included in this “overhaul” is a review as “to what adjustments have been made (e.g. urbanisation adjustments, and changes to allow for differing climatological characteristics between the different sites used over the years so as to avoid introducing any inhomogeneities)”.[2]
Not before time. The CET problem, from a birds eye view, is staring the Met Office in the face.
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June 11, 2017 at 01:00AM
‘Super Corals’ Are Resilient To Climate Change, Scientists Discover
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
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The “super corals” discovered within a New Caledonian mangrove system. STEPH GARDNER
An international team of researchers first found the super corals during an expedition to a remote lagoon in New Caledonia in 2016. Their “surprising results” showed the lagoon had a diverse community of reef-building corals that had adapted to live in extreme these conditions.
Publishing their findings in the journal Scientific Reports, the team was investigating coral reef health in relating to climate change. As oceans get warmer and more acidic, vast swathes of coral species suffer. This has been documented globally, with a recent report from the Australian Research Council showing two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef had been affected so far this year.
Coral bleaching occurs when waters are too warm. These conditions make the corals expel the algae living in their tissues—causing them to lose their color. Algae provides coral with 90 percent of its energy, so while this process does not kill it, it places the coral under far greater stress and puts it at greater risk of death.
As global temperatures increase, scientists are increasingly concerned about how coral reefs—which form barriers protecting shorelines from waves and storms, and provide ecosystems for a vast number of species—will fare.
The latest findings provide some relief. Emma Camp, from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia, and colleagues found water in the semi-enclosed lagoon system was hot, acidic and lacking in oxygen when compared to neighboring reefs. Yet its coral communities was surprisingly rich—there were 20 species covering up to 35 percent of the lagoon site.
“Enhanced coral respiration, alongside high particulate organic content of the lagoon sediment, suggests acclimatisation to this trio of temperature, oxygen and pH changes through heterotrophic plasticity.” Heterotrophic refers to organisms that depend on organic substances for nutrients because they cannot make their own food.
In a statement, Camp said: “The existence of corals living under this usually deadly trio of conditions, comparable and even exceeding what is predicted under climate change, gives us new hope that some corals will be able to persist into the future. These could indeed be the super corals of the future that will help support proactive management options attempting to upgrade reef resilience.”
Concluding, the team wrote: “Evidence here, and from other similar habitats increasingly highlight that reef neighboring systems could act as local reservoirs of coral populations highly resistant to extreme environmental conditions.”
Coral bleaching explained.NOAA
The next step in their research is to search for similar systems in the Great Barrier Reef. The expedition, funded by the National Geographic Society Waitt Foundation, will allow the team to explore mangrove systems—which have similar, extreme conditions to those seen in New Caledonia—and how corals there may have adapted.
“As a result of the expedition we will be able to collect invaluable baseline physical and molecular data to discover how corals within the Great Barrier Reef have already adapted and how they might cope in the future,” Camp said. “I’m excited at the prospect of being able to transfer our discoveries from other sites to our own home reefs.”
David Suggett, who will accompany Camp on the expedition, said: “By exploring the very margins—such as reef-neighbouring mangroves that are often ignored by coral surveys—we’re continually finding populations of super coral that are resistant to hot, acidic and hypoxic conditions predicted under climate change. This is a game changer for how we consider coral reef resilience into the future for the Great Barrier Reef.
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com
June 10, 2017 at 11:15PM
Former NASA Chief Scientist: America is “Under Siege” from Climate Disinformers
via Watts Up With That?
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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Former NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan is worried some media outlets do not provide sufficiently apocalyptic climate views.
Americans ‘under siege’ from climate disinformation – former Nasa chief scientist
Fake news spread by those with a profit motive is leaving many people oblivious to the threat of climate change, says former head of US space agency.
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
@hannahdevFriday 9 June 2017 00.15 AEST
Americans are “under siege” from disinformation designed to confuse the public about the threat of climate change, Nasa’s former chief scientist has said.
Speaking to the Guardian, Ellen Stofan, who left the US space agency in December, said that a constant barrage of half-truths had left many Americans oblivious to the potentially dire consequences of continued carbon emissions, despite the science being unequivocal.
“We are under siege by fake information that’s being put forward by people who have a profit motive,” she said, citing oil and coal companies as culprits. “Fake news is so harmful because once people take on a concept it’s very hard to dislodge it.”
During the past six months, the US science community has woken up to this threat, according to Stofan, and responded by ratcheting up efforts to communicate with the public at the grassroots level as well as in the mainstream press.
“The harder part is this active disinformation campaign,” she said before her appearance at Cheltenham Science Festival this week. “I’m always wondering if these people honestly believe the nonsense they put forward. When they say ‘It could be volcanoes’ or ‘the climate always changes’… to obfuscate and to confuse people, it frankly makes me angry.”
Stofan added that while “fake news” is frequently characterised as a problem in the right-leaning media, she saw evidence of an “erosion of people’s ability to scrutinise information” across the political spectrum. “All of us have a responsibility,” she said. “There’s this attitude of ‘I read it on the internet therefore it must be true’.”
…
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Even using IPCC estimates, there is a real possibility we do not face a climate emergency. From IPCC AR5 Chapter 10 page 871;
… Estimates of the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) based on multiple and partly independent lines of evidence from observed climate change indicate that there is high con dence that ECS is extremely unlikely to be less than 1°C and medium con dence that the ECS is likely to be between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C. These assessments are consistent with the overall assessment in Chapter 12, where the inclusion of additional lines of evidence increases con dence in the assessed likely range for ECS. …
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The lower IPCC estimate for a plausible equilibrium climate sensitivity is an unexciting 1.5C per doubling of CO2. Even 1C per doubling is considered possible.
CO2 is currently growing at around 3ppm / year, according to observations from Mauna Loa.
Starting from 2016 / 404ppm, project the CO2 level by 2100;
404ppm + 3ppm * (2100 – 2016) = 656ppm
Calibrating for 1.5C / doubling (CO2 forcing is logarithmic) – determine the value of k;
1.5C = k log10(2)
k = 1.5C / log10(2) = 4.98
Determine the equilibrium temperature anomaly for 656ppm;
T = k log10(656ppm / 280ppm) = 1.8C temperature rise above pre-industrial temperatures.
Note this is the equilibrium sensitivity calculation – the transient climate sensitivity is likely to be even less.
Since we have already experienced around 1C of temperature rise without any noticeable ill effects, an additional 0.8C by the year 2100 is a big nothing burger.
Obviously everyone can debate the likelihood of various climate sensitivity estimates, or the possibility that the rise in atmospheric CO2 level will accelerate as China complies with their Paris agreement commitments, by building hundreds of new coal plants, but my point stands;
The science is NOT unequivocal that we face a climate emergency. Using the IPCC’s own climate figures, there is a real possibility anthropogenic CO2 is not a big deal.
Calling people who point this out purveyors of “fake news” is pure climate alarmism.
As for what happens after the year 2100, frankly that is their problem. By the year 2100 humanity will know whether CO2 is causing climate problems – and will have the energy supply options and advanced engineering capabilities to deal with any eventuality.
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June 10, 2017 at 09:43PM
